Lots of cleaning and painting over the 26th, 27th, 28th and 31st. I’m de-rusting using electrolysis, wirebrushing clean and then painting.
Time spent - 11 hours
Money spent - £10 on a roll of brake pipe from eBay for the next section of the build.
I’m waiting for parts to arrive and to be sourced now so I’m going to spend a little time cleaning and stripping down the subframe, engine and hubs. Continued strip down of front hubs, only the balljoints left to remove now. Removed a couple of bits from the subframe. Started to paint suspension parts.
Time spent - 2 Hours
Money spent - £35 on consumables (engine degreaser, black Hammerite, red engine enamel, white spirt)
Attacked the front hubs yet again. They have being giving me problems. Especially the offside which the CV joint was firmly stuck. Whacking with a lump hammer had just damaged the end of the CV joint and not freed it off. Today however I managed, using a combination of hammers, breaker bar, and rather unsafe techniques to reduce them to their component parts. In doing so I discovered that I have a pair of probably expensive after market alloy 4-pot calipers. I knew they were not metro or mini standard fit but it was a nice surprise when I lifted them away to find they were as light as a feather.
I’m going to recondition the hubs, new bearings and so on. The stuck CV is now scrap but I’m gonna need a pair of drum brake ones anyway so I’m not that bothered.
Time spent - 1.5 hours
Money spent - 0
Brake master cylinder arrived today. A rather helpful chap called Muffin Man from alt.autos.mini sold it me for a fiver + postage which is a bargain to say the least. My master cylinder was a servo type and would have not fitted easily (if at all).
Assembled pedal box. Laid out various parts (pedals and box, steering column, handbrake, and gear selctor) to get an idea of where to put the pedals. See photos. Still a little tricky without the seats but I have an idea now. Just need bolting in place down.
Continued the task of cleaning parts.
Time spent - 2 hours
Money spent - £10 Second hand master cylinder + postage
Riveted outer panels in place. Started cleaning up some of the parts and de-rusting them using electrolysis. I’m not going into great detail now but electrolysis involves “wiring up” a bucket of water and using the magic of science to reverse the rusting process. It’s far less destructive than using a wire brush and also far less effort. I might write more on it later.
Photos show side panels in place and my electrolysis set up (battery charger, wires, bits of metal and washing up bowl)
Time spent - 2 hours
Money spent - £2 on consumables (rivets)
Riveted inner side panels in place.
Time spent - 30mins
Money spent - £35 on tools (Vice)
Work on the buggy officially started today. I had done a little fitting of the panels on Thurs but I got stuck in today. Trimmed inner and outer panels to size after much fit, remove, re-fit, remove etc. Clamped them up and drilled all the holes, They just need riveting now.
Time spent - 3 hours
Cash spent - Nothing
Started to align and trim body panels. Cleaned up the garage a bit.
Time spent - 1.5 hrs
Cash spent - 0
Finished stipping rear brake and hub components. Dismantled steering column to send the inner part away to Dave Smart (the manufacturer of the kit) to be modified.
Gave the garage a good clean in preparation for starting work on the actual car.
Time spent - 3 hours
Money spent - Nowt
Kind of rolled the engine out of the subframe in a very unorthadox manner - unsafe to both me and the engine.
Removed brakes and hubs from one side of the rear subframe.
Cleaned a lot of the crap off the subframe, still needs a more thorough clean and possibly paint. Also started to clean up clutch master cylinder.
Time spent - 3 hours
Money spent - Nothing